By LEILA HATOUM -- arabnews.com -- BEIRUT: It is two in the afternoon and Verdun Street, one of Beirut’s upscale neighborhoods, is doubly lit up — by the midday sun and by street lights. “Look at the street lamps shining brightly in the middle of the day while most areas suffer from power outages,” Fatima Hachem, 29, a local resident, told Arab News. The incongruity of the scene — street lights kept unnecessarily on during daylight hours — is unmistakable in a country where residents get between three and 12 hours of electricity a day depending on the locality. Such systemic inefficiencies are all the more glaring at a time when Lebanon is seeking a $10 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Given its disproportionate contribution to Lebanon’s public debt, the urgency of an overhaul of the electricity sector cannot be overstated. “Electricity reform is one of the key steps to re-equilibrate the economy,” an IMF official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arab News. “We will see it as an emblematic and major improvement.” The official added that, without reforms, “there would be no loan program.” As a first step, the IMF has asked Lebanon to audit its national electricity company, known as Electricite du Liban (EDL). Loss estimates should note “not only the changes in price of fuel oil, but also the change in the exchange rate,” it said. In recent months, the purchasing power of the Lebanese population has eroded, with the currency losing two-thirds of its value, dropping to LBP4,000 from LBP1,515 to the US dollar. “At the moment, the Lebanese government links increasing tariffs on electricity to the increase in power generation, while the IMF believes that those two should not be tied. Also, eliminating electricity subsidies is the most significant potential expenditure saving,” the IMF official said. To generate fiscal savings, it is imperative the Lebanese government increases tariffs as soon as possible, they said. However, this would mean raising electricity charges for most of the population, who are already under economic pressure as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

by devdiscourse.com -- The Lebanese central bank aims to bring down the price of the U.S. dollar progressively with the agreement of licensed foreign currency dealers to help stabilise prices as much as it can, governor Riad Salameh told Reuters on Tuesday. President Michel Aoun said on Friday the central bank would supply the currency market with dollars from Monday as part of an effort to prop up the Lebanese pound, which has shed more than 60% of its value since October. Responding to a written question from Reuters, Salameh did not say if the central bank had started supplying the market with dollars. "Our aim is with the agreement of the licensed exchangers to bring the price of the dollar progressively lower, contributing as much as we can to stabilise the prices," he wrote. "This approach is necessary in a cash economy," he said. "We hope that reforms will be enacted ... to bring confidence."

Lebanon is grappling with an acute financial crisis seen as the biggest threat to its stability since the 1975-90 civil war. Its currency has fallen amid a hard currency liquidity crunch, which led the state to default on its sovereign debt in March. Dollars continue to trade on a parallel market despite official efforts to regulate dealing. Licensed foreign currency dealers agreed with the government earlier this month to work to gradually reduce the exchange rate to 3,200 pounds per dollar. On the parallel market on Wednesday, one dealer said he bought dollars at a rate of 4,700 and another at 4,800. The official rates on offer at licensed dealers were 3,860/3,910. Queues formed outside some licensed dealers, where several customers said they had bought a maximum of $200 at the 3,910 rate. Lebanon still applies an official peg of 1,507.5 pounds to the dollar for imports of fuel, medicine and wheat.

by arabnews.com -- NAJIA HOUSSARI -- BEIRUT: The UN in Lebanon has denied it has any intention of stopping its operations or evacuating its personnel from the country. It said that “the support provided by the UN through its activities and operations is continuing and increasing at a faster rate, regardless of the challenges that resulted from the pandemic of the new coronavirus.” Stories circulated on social media at the end of last week about the intention of the UN to withdraw from Lebanon — and that the international organization had told its foreign employees to prepare their passports in preparation for leaving the country. However, the UN in Lebanon described this information as “speculation” in a statement issued on Monday

For the first time since 2011, two World Food Programme (WFP) trucks carrying supplies were seized last Tuesday while crossing the northern coastal road toward Syrian territory. The young men who intercepted the trucks justified their actions by saying that the Lebanese were hungry and that some people in the Lebanese state were “smuggling food items at the expense of the Lebanese people to the Syrian regime.” The two trucks are still parked at the Port of Tripoli after Lebanese customs teams worked to protect them and return them to the port. Malak Jaafar, the WFP spokesperson in Lebanon, told Arab News: “There is no decision yet to move the organization’s convoy from Lebanon to Syria. The convoy includes 39 trucks loaded with foodstuffs to be sent to the organization’s warehouses in Homs, Syria. There are 37 trucks at Beirut port and two trucks at Tripoli port waiting for security clearance so that we can move the convoy toward Syrian territory and there are contacts with Lebanese officials to secure this protection.”

by thenational.ae -- The Lebanese army on Monday said it arrested dozens of suspects for vandalism after days of protests against a plunging local currency and the worst economic crisis in decades. Hundreds of protesters clashed with security troops at the weekend across the nation after days of rallies against a ruling class considered to be corrupt and impotent in tackling the worsening crisis. "The total number of arrests made by military intelligence between June 11 and 15 in different Lebanese regions is 36 people for acts of vandalism", damaging public and private property and attacking troops, the army said. The army launched raids in the northern port of Tripoli, Lebanon's second city, the official National News Agency reported. For three nights, young men attacked banks and shops and threw rocks at security troops in Tripoli, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. Medical services reported dozens of wounded.

Protesters were angered by a steep drop in the Lebanese pound, the rocketing price of food and what they perceive to be the government's failure to rein in the country's economic collapse. Relative calm returned on Sunday evening, with protesters holding a peaceful rally in the capital Beirut, while dozens marched to a central square in Tripoli. President Michel Aoun on Monday discussed the protests with the country's top security body, including ministers and military officials. "Such acts of vandalism will not be allowed after today," Mr Aoun said after the meeting of the Higher Defence Council. He called for "a wave of arrests, including of those who planned and carried out" such acts, and ordered authorities to increase "pre-emptive" operations to prevent further violence.